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Article: Halfway through the Hail Mary. (Opinion).
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- December 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A Methodist friend of mine has always been puzzled by the emphasis Catholics place upon ready-made prayers. She considers recourse to the Hail Mary to be little more than prayer on autopilot, the rote droning of words learned and memorized as children. How, she wonders, can it possibly produce an intense and focused spiritual experience? Self-sprung prayers, on the other hand, she views as genuine evidence of a willed act to commune with God, relying upon individual creative and expressive abilities.
My casual response has always been to mention precisely where we first find the Hail Mary. It is the form of address the Angel Gabriel uses when he informs Mary that ...